 Please join in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning. Let's get musically present by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn which you'll find inside your order of service. Welcome to the warmest day of the year and to the first Sunday service of the new year at First Unitarian Society where independent thinkers gather in a safe, nurturing environment to explore issues of social, spiritual, and ethical significance as we try to make a difference in this world. I'm Steve Goldberg, a wildly entertaining and charming member of this congregation, and I'd like to extend a special welcome to any guests, visitors, or newcomers. If this is your first visit to First Unitarian Society, I think you'll find that it's a special place and if you'd like to learn more about our special buildings, we offer a guided tour after today's service. Just gather over here by the windows after the service and we will take good care of you. Speaking of taking care of each other, this is a perfect time to silence those pesky electronic devices that we just will not need for the next hour. And while you're taking care of that simple but important task, let me remind you that if you're accompanied by a youngster today, and I see several of them here, several indeed, and you think your young companion would prefer to experience the service from a more private space, we offer a couple options for you, including our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium, and some comfortable seating just outside the doorway in the commons from which you and your youngster can see and hear the service. And we all know that one of the reasons we can hear and see the service is because we have a great team of volunteers whose names I will announce right now so that we can thank David Briles for running the sound system, John McEvna, Pam McMullen, and Lois Evenson for handling the lay minister duties. Our greeters, Claire Box and Patty Whitty upstairs, they're the ones who smiled at you and opened the door and welcomed you this morning as you arrived. Our ushers, Marty Hollis, Ken Gage, Brian Chanis, and Michael Losey, special thanks to Helena McEvna, Biss Nitschke, and Sandra Plisch for handling the hospitality and the coffee hour, and our tour guide, the ever-reliable John Powell. No announcements today, you'll be glad to hear that, so we can get right on with the service. I invite you to sit back or lean forward to enjoy today's service. I know you'll find that it will touch your heart, stir your spirits, and trigger one or two new thoughts as we start the new year. We're glad you're here. Thank you, Joe, and let us carry on. We give thanks for the blessing of winter, season to cherish the heart, to make warm and quiet for the heart, to make soups and broths for the heart, to cook for the heart, to read for the heart, to curl up softly and nestle with the heart, to sleep deeply and gently at one with the heart, to dream with the heart, to spend time with the heart, a long, long time of peace with the heart. We give thanks for the blessing of winter, a season to cherish the heart. I invite you to rise in body or in spirit for the lighting of our chalice. You will join with me in reading the words printed in your program this morning. Each morning we hold out our chalice of being to be filled with the graces of life which abound, air to breathe, food to eat, companions to love, beauty to behold, art to cherish, causes to serve. They come in ritual possession these gifts of life. Whether we deserve them or not, we cannot say. They are poured out. Ours is the task of holding steady the chalice of being. And on this mild January morning, please turn to your neighbor in exchange with them a warm greeting. Please be seated. I'd like to invite any of our young people to come forward for our message for all ages. Good morning. How are you? Good. Kept her coat because it might be cold up here too, right? Yeah. Got your coat too. Well it looks like the first day of school up here, which it is. Actually it's the first day of school for your church school classes in the new year. So one time high up in the mountains, there was an old hermit and he lived by himself in a rocky cave. And his home was colored by the end of a rainbow. And so every day he would sit on a rock and watch the colors play over the valley and disappear into another land, the other end of the rainbow. Now one day a young man appeared on a silver horse and he stopped beside the silent hermit and said, old man, I'm looking for the end of the rainbow. Aren't we all? The hermit smiled and said, where the colors touch my cave. That's the end of the rainbow. The young rider was shocked. He looked at the hermit's barren home and he said, well I live at the other end of the rainbow and there lies this great rainbow mansion that is full of treasure. So what kind of treasure is there here at the other end of the rainbow? Peace and happiness replied the old hermit. The young rider was disappointed at the hermit's answer and not finding the treasure that he had expected at this end of the rainbow. He followed it back to the other side of the valley where he lived. Over the years this young rider became a very successful merchant. He became very rich and now he actually lived in the rainbow mansion and he filled that mansion with even more treasures. But although he was now quite wealthy, he wasn't happy. And one day he was sitting in his big office and he remembered the hermit and what that hermit had said years ago, well perhaps he can bring me the peace and happiness that I longed for, he thought to himself. Now the hermit did not want to leave his cave. He was very comfortable there but when the merchant summoned him and said, you need to come and help me, he put on his best rags and he walked all the way to the other end of the rainbow. Now the merchant was pleased to have the old man in the comfort of his big mansion and he gave him the best room in the house, a bed with silk sheets. But the old man wasn't comfortable in that bed and so every night he would slip away into the garden and he would sleep between the big roots of a friendly tree. The merchant offered his guest his richest foods to eat and the finest wine to drink. But the old man, he didn't care about these at all. Instead he picked the fruits that grew in the garden and he drank from a little stream of fresh clear running water. The merchant invited all kinds of great thinkers and important teachers to the rainbow mansion to converse with the hermit to share their wisdom. But the hermit, he was kind of a simple guy and so he crept away to talk with the creatures that visited the garden. The great thinkers and important teachers were so busy trying to impress each other that they hardly noticed that the hermit was gone. Well one day the merchant went for a walk in his garden and he found the hermit sitting under a gentle tree talking to the animals. I thought you'd like that one. Well the merchant said to the old man, old hermit, he said why are you not sleeping in this wonderful room that I prepared for you? The bed is very soft, the sheets are so cool. And the hermit replied well you know all my life I've just slept in the arms of nature. I don't fear the dark night and the nighttime whispers make me have good dreams. Well the merchant just didn't understand the old hermit. Why don't you eat all the excellent food and the drink that I have offered you? And the hermit smiled and said well by eating just a little bit of these simple foods I can taste the goodness that grows from the earth and the clear spring water doesn't make me feel all giddy in the head and say things I'd rather not say. Well the merchant was very puzzled by these answers and he said again why do you talk to all these simple creatures and ignore the wise men that I have brought to discuss important things with you. And the hermit looked at all the animals gathered around him and he said all the creatures of the world have something to say. They're not fools just because they live very simple lives. Well after this last answer the merchant went back to his office. I asked the hermit to come here he said to himself to bring me peace and happiness and instead he just brings me all these words that I don't understand. And so after a while he called the hermit to him and said hermit can you bring me peace and happiness. I cannot. Said the hermit. You cannot make me happy. No I cannot. The hermit said again. Well why not. Said the merchant. He had a very sad expression. And so the hermit looked very closely at the merchant and said peace can't come from me. Peace has to come from within you. Because peace is like a seed. You can't force it to grow. You can't shape it into something you'd like it to be. You just have to give that seed love and freedom so that it can grow outward and become something pure and beautiful. Only then will you find true happiness. Well the merchant was silent for just a moment or two and then he said well how do I start. What do I do. And the old man smiled and said you must start by letting me go back to the cave where I belong. So the hermit was allowed to go back to the cave that he loved to sit beneath the falling colors of the rainbow. And with a satisfied smile he could look across the valleys to the other end of the rainbow and know that the seeds of peace had begun to grow there as well. So that's our story about the old hermit and the merchant and perhaps you learned a little something about peace and happiness. But if you haven't maybe you'll learn more in your classes. So we're going to sing you out with our next guest, Jim. Bye. Please be seated. I invite you now into a period of meditation and intercommunion. For many of us life probably feels like a roller coaster ride, rising and falling, circuitous, with enough plateaus to provide temporary respite on our way to the finish line. And perhaps there are times when we might prefer a long, quiet highway to all the shaking and swaying, the slow climbs and the sudden descents of this carnival attraction. But then we'd probably end up profoundly dissatisfied. Because relieved of its contrasts, life loses much of its savor. If our spirits have not been depressed by grief, they will probably never be stirred by compassion. If our teeth have never chattered with cold, the touch of a warm southerly breeze would not delight the skin without the trepidation that accompanies a moonless night sunlight spilling over the eastern horizon wouldn't uplift our spirits. Is it not naive to insist that paradise is a place of perennial peace and perfect order and undiluted comfort, a place where no one calculates wind chills or measures the heat index, where compassion is superfluous, because everyone is sufficient unto him or herself. But is it this innocent yearning for a life free of dissonance that keeps us frustrated with the human condition, impatient with winter, allergic to discomfort? Instead, let us revel in the energies issuing from our earth with open hearts receive all that life hands us for the blessing that it is. May this day be for us heaven enough. It may be the only heaven will ever know. Let us continue in a moment or two more of silent meditation. Blessed be and on that. The first of our two readings comes from a gentleman by the name of Steve Gardner, who lives in Billings, Montana, a personal reflection. He writes, as a beginning author hoping to gain advice and inspiration, I attended a state writer's conference. And the weekend was capped off by a closing banquet at which awards were given out for fiction and nonfiction and poetry and several other categories. But then then came the highest honor of them all, the Hang Fire Award. The master of ceremonies read the winner's name and a short energetic woman dashed to the front as everybody rose in a standing ovation. The Hang Fire Award, the MC explained, for the sake of newcomers like me, is given every year for the writer who has received the most rejection slips. Seriously? I could not believe that this woman was so excited to be the most rejected writer in the state of Montana. A friend saw my confusion and said, well, it's a recognition of her persistence. If she has the most rejection slips, she probably sent out the most pieces of her writing. I got it, but I still felt uncomfortable that they had singled out this woman for her failures. Well, over the years that followed, I had a few articles published in the local newspaper and in regional magazines, and I went to the writer's conference again the next spring, and I actually won an award for photojournalism, after which I continued working on my writing, increasing my productivity, and reaching out for larger markets. And as my correspondence with editors increased, I began to keep two file folders, one for my acceptance letters and one for my rejections. The second file grew much faster than the first. By the time I attended the spring writer's conference again, I had received 75 rejections, enough to make many a writer reconsider his or her passion. And yet I had also been published in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and various other magazines and newspapers, and the joy of occasional publication had balanced the sting of rejection. And so that year, I won the Hang Fire Award, the most rejected writer in the state, but now I understood. The second reading comes from the Dalai Lama. An internal sense of happiness closely linked to an inner feeling of contentment is the sense of self-worth that we possess. And in describing the most reliable basis for developing that sense of self-worth, the Dalai Lama offers this explanation. He says, now, suppose I had no depth of human feeling, no capacity for easily creating good friends. Well, without that, when I lost my own country, becoming a refugee would have been very difficult for me, because there was a certain degree of respect that was given to the Dalai Lama in Tibet people related to me accordingly, regardless of whether they had any affection for me or not. But if you see yourself first and foremost as a human being within a human community, you share a bond that is strong enough to give rise to this important sense of worth and dignity. And that bond can be a source of consolation in the event that you lose everything as I did. Generally speaking, you have two different kinds of individuals. On the one hand, you could have this wealthy, successful person surrounded by relations and so on. And if that person's source of dignity and self-worth is only based on their material standing, then so long as that standing remains, their fortune is intact, maybe that person will retain a sense of their own security and self-worth. But if their fortune should wane, there's no other refuge. Now, on the other hand, you can have a person that enjoys comparable status and success, but at the same time, that person is warm and affectionate and has this feeling of compassion. And with such a person, there is far less chance of becoming depressed if that fortune suddenly disappears. So here you can see a very practical value of human warmth and affection in developing this important sense of abiding self-worth. So I mentioned for the question, I said surely you must know with the rule that I have traveled, it's a mistake, I know it's finding out you've bought me extra time. I cleared the air, I turned around to ask and found he was no longer. I thought maybe this was God, I saw. He got down on my knees, in the higher of my hands, a wind blown through the trees that set me afloat. He stayed with me, I wrote to him before the singing and he was calling extra time. Straight, when I come back to the path that's for me, it's the finder of old time. To see the answers that I need, the eyes of those I've told before. I told Joe last night that song is a perfect complement to today's theme and the message. Very intuitive. Recently I came across an essay on Alexander the Great and the essay was written by that eminent American man of letters George Steiner back in 1991. And Steiner's review of the 4th century BC boy conqueror's riotous life, that review captured my attention because it deviated in several notable respects from the rather admiring accounts of Alexander that we find in today's popular media. Now Steiner, amply supported by contemporary research, says that the closest parallels that we can find to Alexander in western history, the closest individual that mirrors what he did was Adolf Hitler. Now perhaps temporal distance and historical myopia have served to moderate this ancient potentates image but apart from the raw unrestrained power that he wielded there wasn't a whole lot to admire about Alexander. As a military commander the Macedonian had no peer. He was crowned king as a teenager and by the time of his death at the age of 32 Alexander had conquered territory stretching from the Nile to the Indus River from the Balkans to the Persian Gulf. But as George Steiner points out success was achieved by means of an utter ruthlessness and an ambition, an incredible ambition that clearly led to his early demise. He may well have been poisoned by members of his own entourage. As a youngster Alexander studied with Aristotle one of the Greek world's wisest and most ethically astute men didn't seem to make a whole lot of difference. With crowning success on the field of battle his ambitions soared and his armies spent years on the march and Alexander ignored repeated pleas by his weary battle fatigue commanders to to pull back and to be satisfied with their already immense gains. He purged his leadership corps. He eliminated any officer who questioned his decisions. As Steiner observes hysteria and morbid distrust of all who drew near him came to possess the Macedonians fevered mind. Few lamented his passing for several centuries after his death. Alexander was regarded as a tyrannous aggressor a foreign autocrat who imposed his will by violence alone. Alexander the Great was a larger than life figure to be sure but his early death should not be viewed as tragic. Success affected him like a powerful habit forming drug on which ultimately the man overdosed. Now perhaps this ancient story can serve in our own time as something of a cautionary tale for although there has been no one remotely like Alexander since Adolf Hitler at least this malady that he suffered from is a familiar one. A steady stream of revelations about sexual misconduct by men in high places has poured out in recent months and women in all walks of life have complained about the liberties that such men have been taking with other people's bodies and some of these miscreants like that ancient monarch seem to have regarded their predatory practices as a personal prerogative a status perk that they were meant to enjoy because of their success or as Donald Trump summed it up so succinctly in 2005 when you are a star they let you do it you can do anything what's truly alarming about these reports is their ubiquity as the emergent hashtag me too movement has made clear this kind of abuse and exploitation has been practiced by office holders of both political parties by a wide assortment of professionals and by men of various races ethnicities and religions if nothing else this spectacle would seem to confirm Lord Acton's famous dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely and to the extent that success success in business or politics or sports or entertainment or even journalism to the extent that that kind of success does give an individual increased leverage over others the temptation to exercise that heady power inappropriately grows accordingly well sexual misconduct aside power can also foster a dangerous belief that one need not answer for their behavior that power inoculates a person from accountability US presidents are particularly prone to this letting power go to their heads at which point oftentimes they are brought up short Lyndon Johnson Richard Nixon's administrations both ended ingloriously the power of the office seduced George W. Bush as well as attested by a comment that he made early in his tenure Bush said I do not need to explain why I say thanks that's the interesting part about being president maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say things but I don't owe anybody an explanation why do so many powerful people act as if their moral compasses had suddenly developed a malfunction well some may in fact be sociopaths individuals who have spent their lives striving for power and for influence for its own sake outwardly charming often cleverly manipulative as they climb the ladder of success once they have arrived the masks come off and their hidden authoritarian authoritarian impulses come into full view and evidence does suggest that sociopaths may be born and not made that they come into this world lacking a crucial part of the brain that that actually triggers our empathetic responses and so without an ability to experience and to enjoy fellow feeling sociopaths objectify those with whom they must interact using them as pawns to secure their own advantage now this is not invariably the case of course a person who has been exposed to and somehow been able to internalize the appropriate social and ethical norms well in that case their sociopathological tendencies can in fact be mitigated but sociopaths do seem predisposed to use power inappropriately but on the other hand there is also evidence that power itself holding power itself can have a transformative effect that is very similar to sociopathology several decades of research by dasher kelpner of the university of california at berkeley suggests that as a person acquires more and more power something does begin to shift in their mental makeup they act he says as if they had suffered traumatic brain injury when people are overly successful in gaining power the researcher says they tend to become more impulsive less risk-aware and like sociopaths less adept at seeing things from another person's point of view in related research jonathan davidson has identified what he calls the hubris syndrome in persons who have successfully acquired and held on to power for an extended period of time left unchallenged left unchecked such power holders begin to feel genuine contempt contempt for other people they lose contact with reality they engage in restless and reckless actions and they become increasingly incompetent this warping of the personality is one of the real perils that attend success and and the power that accompanies it and yet we can point to plenty of highly successful people who have been able to keep a level head and continue to lead to lead caring and epithetic lives so how did they avoid the pitfalls that i've just been describing let's consider rebecca solnott rebecca solnott is a prolific author and it is much in demand as a social commentator and solnott recently penned an article in which she highlighted her own struggles with success and with celebrity and at some point in her journey up climbing the ladder she realized i need to take a take a step back down that ladder and take a long hard look at myself and when she did this she didn't especially like what she saw as she increasingly was in demand solnott noticed that her feelings toward others were beginning to shift that she was experiencing this chronic sense of urgency which made her perceive other people around her as being in her way she said i began to think that my rights and that my needs mattered more than those of other people and in this state of self-absorbed entitlement ordinary people simply became bothersome but solnott recognized this newfound callousness and how it violated her professed ideals and the values that she had been raised with and she said as my own status had written i came to realize that the force that you really need to begin to resist is yourself it may well be that when a person experiences a great deal of socially sanctioned success when they build on it and when they invest in it they also become steadily less self-aware preoccupied with the care and feeding of their public persona the individual increasingly looks outward and stops looking inward and so it did take a concerted mindful effort on solnott's part to correct this imbalance and to bring her ideals and her behavior back into alignment richard roch is a buddhist teacher and he says you have to begin with the fundamental practice of knowing your own mind the mind he says can be our most powerful ally if it can be trained to be used in a self-reflective and discriminating fashion it is perhaps our best line of defense against the shadow side of success oscar toskene arturo toskene is an interesting figure to consider here he was highly celebrated in his time as classical music lovers know he was one of the early 20th century's premier orchestra conductors admiring but equally famous conductors described toskene's work with the baton as incomparable couldn't get any better despite his singular triumphs toskene knew his own mind he was courted by both muscelini and hitler before world war two the powerful leaders of europe's emerging fascist powers toskene demurred honors generous honorariums failed to win him over he would not lend his prestige to german and italian cultural projects as a result his recordings and his broadcasts were banned in both of those countries but toskene still conducted he was a birthright roman catholic but he traveled to palestine to lend his immense talent to the newly formed orchestra in palestine comprised mostly of jewish refugees from the nazi regimes following world war two the philosopher isaia berlin dubbed pascanini the most morally dignified and inspiring hero of our time clearly it is possible to enjoy incredible success without putting one's personality and one's core values at risk but again knowing your own mind is critical but there are other perils to be concerned about now toskene never let his successes interfere with his moral scruples but he did suffer gravely from expectations that were left unfulfilled he never found in his entire life despite all of his successes the ultimate success that he was looking for he said in all of my artistic life i have never i have never experienced a moment of complete satisfaction another musical legend fran's list had similar overweening ambitions despite a towering reputation as a performer and as a composer list was profoundly disappointed with himself to tell the truth he told a friend i sense in myself a terrible lack of talent compared with what i would like to express the notes that i write are pitiful this chronic sense of insufficiency and frustration because you never quite achieve the success that you long for now it's not my intention this morning to dismiss success success as an artist a professional or public certain servant to dismiss success as a less than worthy objective in our lives far from it because i've enjoyed a modicum of success myself it's a nice thing to have but the challenge always is to keep it in perspective which is precisely what the Dalai Lama was urging in that passage that i shared earlier in our service success in our chosen endeavors and the recognition that comes with it they're not to be sneezed at and yet the mental and emotional security and the sense of self-worth that we want that we crave are most dependably secured as we forge a common bond with other members of the human family and that bond as the Dalai Lama said can be a source of consolation in the event that you lose everything but the thing about it is is that you don't have to lose everything all the successes and all all all the wonderful goals that you've worked for in order to feel unfulfilled and disconsolate you can feel that way in the midst of all your successes as oscar wild famously observed in this world there are only two tragedies one is not getting what you want and the other one is getting it now one would think that some people psychologists for example would be more cognizant of the perils of success than perhaps the ordinary run of us because these are folks who do study the life of the mind people who are equipped to help the rest of us understand our own mental processes our emotional states and our predilections and psychologists do this very well but that doesn't mean that they too don't struggle with emotional complexity emotional complexities of achievement and of success she wrote once about her own father Eric Erickson and Sue Erickson Bloland who is actually a psychologist herself said that her father was the guy who actually coined the phrase identity crisis interestingly enough he had one himself as Erickson rose to the heights of his profession the house was filled with all kinds of plaques and honorary degrees but she says those failed to bring my father the true sense of accomplishment that he longed for and reflecting upon her father's experience as well as others who have enjoyed comparable success Sue Erickson Bloland says that we need to be cognizant always of the humanity of our heroes because we want to believe that they somehow have arrived arrived at this secure place of self-approval that having achieved recognition this can set all of us free from our knowing feelings of self-doubt we want to believe that if we ourselves like our heroes could feel sufficiently admired we would be healed our own self-esteem would be secured we harbor fantasies about success that according to Susan Erickson Bloland may tempt us to forego the inner work that someone like Rebecca Solnit undertook. Solnit as you recall realized that she needed to do some mental some serious mental and emotional housekeeping and this is an exercise that Sue Bloland Erickson also recommends she says the real cure for a sense of inadequacy is to expose to others what you are ashamed of and then to discover that you will not be cast out for making that known that you are still a member in good standing of the human community now while this is a lesson that perhaps all of us would be do well to heed in this new year it may be especially relevant for those of us who are preparing for or who have recently experienced retirement at this stage of life success in the commonly accepted sense of that word has to kind of be set aside and if we haven't already begun to do some of that inner work that the Dalai Lama recommends that we better start it darn soon and it doesn't mean at this point in our lives that that success becomes irrelevant only that we need to figure out some way of reconceiving it what does it really mean and while resting at last on our professional laurels we can begin to cultivate supportive relationships pursue neglected interests explore opportunities to serve come to terms with our aging and our mortality consider the legacy that we wish to leave and by so doing we can bring closure to a life that otherwise might leave us feeling unfulfilled and incomplete that too is a kind of success in the eyes of the world's success makes us somebody and now we can kind of let go of that admittedly the kind of success that I'm now recommending for the last chapter of our lives isn't going to get us a whole lot of public recognition but that's not so bad because as the spiritual teacher ramdas tells us you've been somebody long enough you spent the whole first half of your life becoming somebody now you can't work on becoming nobody which is really somebody for when you become nobody there's no more tension there's no more pretense there's no trying to be anyone or anything you can return to the natural state of mind it can shine through unobstructed and the natural state of our mind is pure love blessed be Adam as you can see our first outreach offering for the new year will be dedicated to the work of the NAACP and you can read about their activities in your program please be generous God never turns you by ice and moon and honey I know they are brave for the rain what's the matter today you're for the day it's transgressed by the wonders they saw lights that guide their way all that feel attention you're valuing real life freeze and let go embrace you well from where ever we gather each week as a community of memory and of hope to this time and this place we bring our whole and sometimes our broken cells we carry with us the joys and the sorrows of the recent past seeking here a place where they might be received and celebrated and shared we have one entry in our cares of the congregation book today healing thoughts for skater Nancy Dailey who broke both arms in her right arm both bones in her right arm which i presume happened while she was skating so we send our best wishes for a quick healing to Nancy Dailey in addition to that concern just mentioned we would acknowledge any other unspoken joys or sorrows that remain among us as a community of concern and caring we hold these in our hearts as well let us sit silently for just a moment or two in the spirit of empathy and hope and so by virtue of our brief time together this morning may our burdens be lightened and our joys expanded please join me now in singing our concluding hymn number 350 please be seated for the benediction and the postlude we conclude with this short poem by David buddill have ambition and ego ruined my life where have my easy days gone if only i had a monk friend to wander off into the mountains to visit if only i were so idle that i had time to visit him if only we could while away the day drinking tea and playing flutes and talking if only as the moon rose my friend could point the way home through the mountains with the night's sky lantern to light the way if only i were happy with only that he's down he's right